European Court Rules GCHQ Data Collection Violates Human Rights

AlphaAtlas

AlphaAtlas

[H]ard|Gawd
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In a long awaited decision, The European Court of Human Rights ruled that the GCHQ, the hub of the United Kingdom's surveillance program, violated human rights by failing to provide sufficient safeguards against illegal privacy breaches. The Government Communications Headquarters has been spying on UK Citizens for years, but the general public wasn't aware of the surveillance until Edward Snowden blew the issue wide open in 2013. Considering the issues of "bulk interception of communications, intelligence sharing and obtaining of communications data from communications service providers," the court found that GCHQ violated article 8 of the European convention on human rights. Snowden himself praised the ruling, while government officials claim legislation introduced in 2016 already addresses some of the issues.


The judges said: "While the court does not doubt that related communications data is an essential tool for the intelligence services in the fight against terrorism and serious crime, it does not consider that the authorities have struck a fair balance between the competing public and private interests by exempting it in its entirety from the safeguards applicable to the searching and examining of content."
 
How about spying on people vbiolate's their human rights. Why is it just not safeguarding of the spying data that is wrong. God this is so messed up.
 
So......now what? You think they're going to stop?

Lol. Heck no! Business as usual.
 
I imagine this is just being used as political pressure in the Brexit talks. As if every other EU country doesn't already record everything that goes on in their own respective countries.
 
The NSA broke the law here in the US but who all went to jail for it? Like a previous poster said "business as usual" and they're still doing it here also.
 
Hmm...EU ruling that Britain can't do all the surveillance on their citizens? I think this may get some of the politicians in the UK a little more motivated to leave the EU.
 
BloodyIron said:
Warrantless wiretapping is not okay.
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I don't give a fuck what the Brits are doing to their own citizens in their own country.

Fuck, we fought a war to get away from those guys because ..... they are always fucking over their citizens.

And I'll say this again about "warrant-less wiretapping", sometimes they need a warrant, sometimes they don't, so guess what, sometimes warrant-less wiretapping IS OK. The only issue at hand is defining the "when" that's involved in this issue.
 
Rahh said:
The NSA broke the law here in the US but who all went to jail for it? Like a previous poster said "business as usual" and they're still doing it here also.
Click to expand...


No they didn't. The did NOT break the law. The constitution is the foundation of our laws, something can be found unconstitutional where no law has yet been written governing it. No law said the NSA couldn't do what they were doing.

EDITED:

This page describes it all pretty well. I can't say that it is perfectly accurate as it is one person's effort to describe the issue you have brought up.

https://www.quora.com/Is-there-any-punishment-for-violating-the-US-Constitution
 
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I don't think you know your own constitution as well as you may think. Unreasonable search and seisures. Warrantlless wiretapping is happening on all USA citizens right now. There's no court, no judge, no sober second thought to that, no accountability. "You" fought to get away from that crap? Well too bad, it's in your country.

lcpiper said:
I don't give a fuck what the Brits are doing to their own citizens in their own country.

Fuck, we fought a war to get away from those guys because ..... they are always fucking over their citizens.

And I'll say this again about "warrant-less wiretapping", sometimes they need a warrant, sometimes they don't, so guess what, sometimes warrant-less wiretapping IS OK. The only issue at hand is defining the "when" that's involved in this issue.
Click to expand...
 
BloodyIron said:
I don't think you know your own constitution as well as you may think. Unreasonable search and seisures. Warrantlless wiretapping is happening on all USA citizens right now. There's no court, no judge, no sober second thought to that, no accountability. "You" fought to get away from that crap? Well too bad, it's in your country.
Click to expand...

I think I do know.

I know that as far back as the late 50's the NSA recorded every overseas phone call made, that would be the actual content of the calls, not just the numbers, time, and duration of the calls. That was legal.

I know that the bulk-meta data collection was also on overseas calls and replaced the old program because the world isn't analog anymore.

I know that it's neither illegal nor unconstitutional to monitor foreign nationals inside the USA, or their phone calls, (Merkel anyone?). https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wo...tapping-Angela-Merkels-phone-3-years-ago.html

And I know that if you lump the two together without distinction between who is and who is not a citizen, you can make anyone believe something wrong is going on cause they will make the assumption it's all about themselves without ever questioning the "who".

Again, a warrant is not always required. In point of fact, for intelligence collection, a warrant is NEVER required nor used, because the Intelligence community can not target US Persons therefor they never ever need a warrant.

I know that if I am working an Intel mission and I connect to a signal, and after I connect and begin collecting data, I find that the conversation is between two "probable" US Citizens, I just have to stop and move on. I don't have to immediately delete what was captured. There is no big report required, just move on and continue looking for those who are not US Persons.

But you know all this right? That the rules for Law Enforcement and the Intelligence Community are very different. You recognize that both are part of the government and so when you just say "The Government" without specifying which part. then you can't say if specific activities violate the constitution or the law.

But that's us here in the USA and not the Brits or the EU, which is what this topic is about right.
 
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